Hindsight is 20/20, but Google+'s plan (circles of friend) is the current situation of social networks. People communicate selectively with circles of friends through iMessage, WhatsApp, Snapchat groups, selective Instagram accounts, etc.
I remember at the time of its release, social media was pretty monolithic as well. All of my friends at the time thought it was a joke that the search engine company was trying to ape Facebook. Twitter was big, sure, but nobody I knew had one for socializing with people they knew, mostly just for following celebrities or news personalities. These days, Snap Chat, Instagram, and others have opened the field up more, so maybe if it had been released in that age people would have been more open to giving it a shot. Then again, it feels like privacy is much more in the zeitgeist, so maybe the idea of giving google access to even more of your life would be more laughable than it was previously.
